Gene McDaniels, soul singer and songwriter, dead at 76

Singer and songwriter Gene McDaniels died July 29 at the age of 76. McDaniels is perhaps best-known for having composed the protest song â€śCompared to What,â€ť made famous by jazz musicians Les McCann and Eddie Harris, and the R&B standard â€śFeel Like Makinâ€™ Love,â€ť recorded by numerous performers, most notably Roberta Flack. He was a talented composer and an even more impressive singer.

McDaniels was born February 12, 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska where his family relocated in the 1940s. Like so many of the soul singers who would go on to make names for themselves in the 1960s, McDaniels got his start singing in church. His father was a preacher and the young McDaniels was a regular in the choir from an early age. Inspired by popular gospel singing groups such as the Soul Stirrers, McDaniels would form his own gospel quartet, The Sultans, at a young age …

“It was at Half Price Books, Berkeley, that I happened upon a used copy of this rich, seductive collection. A long-ago Spanish major, I go on losing and finding myself in its double-bladed, doubly-minted pages. Now I’d like to point other border-crossers in its direction. ‘Baja Californians remain orphans of sorts,’ co-editor Harry Polkinhorn reminds us in his foreword, ‘caught between and on the edge of the two power centers that determine their fates and that tend to render them invisible. Our goal when we began this anthology was to make them visible.’ And, indeed, they do make these 53 poets visible and audible as well.” – Al Young

“If you can’t make it across the border, Across the Line/Al otro lado is the next best thing to a trip to Mexico’s Baja California. The astonishing range of fifty-three poetic voices, traditional native chants and popular corridos, which are generously presented in bilingual format, is rooted in a time and place that is both timeless and in constant flux. The poems are by turns full of yearning, lyric, exultant, pungent, mournful, fast-paced as the streets of Tijuana or slow as a cactus growing beyond the dunes. Baja Californians are a population on the move, alive to change, living on the edge, and the poetry in this lovingly-translated anthology conveys the feel of gritty towns and cities, burning deserts, lonely mountains, a huge sky still crowded with stars, the wind blowing in off the Pacific or the Sea of Cortes, the nearness of gray whales and pelicans, the uncertainties of isolation, the jittery rhythms of urban life, the United States forever looming on the other side of the border. And I am happy to say that these poets value the beauty and importance of Baja California’s unique and fragile ecosystems; in Baja California moonlight still matters.”– Homero Aridjis

Tijuana

for Roberto Castillo Udiarte

This city wounds like a fishbone stuck in our throats,
like the man passing by with fear written all over his face.
She wounds us like love and its armies,
like hopelessly lost angels.
She’s the woman who strips us naked at the shore,
the rains of March and Summer’s two storms,
the slap forcing our eyes open; the kiss that closes our lips.
She’s infamy and rancor’s monument,
the dog that frightened us on the way home from school,
the one we sometimes see in the stare of the man beside us.
This town is built upon the sweat and dreams of our parents,
over a girl’s raped body and the murderer’s always ready hand.
She grows like hate, like dust and rage,
like an angry sea that slips through your fingers.
She’d the woman who walked right by without seeing you, who doesn’txxxxxxxxxremember you,
the woman you always disguise, for whom you write your verses.

“The twentieth century in all its confused and troubled eloquence”

“From about 1930 on, a conspiracy of bad poetry has been as carefully organized as the Communist Party, and today controls most channels of publication except the littlest of the little magazines … We disaffiliate.”—Kenneth Rexroth

“Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco.”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“I’m just sitting here overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the achievement of the two-volume Visions & Affiliations …This is an extraordinary piece of work. There should be a major, major review of this. Congratulations. What an achievement.”—Kevin Starr, Historian and California State Librarian Emeritus

“This is absolutely stunning, overwhelming … so much so that I hardly know where to begin or how to end … probably never. I expect that I’ll continue to pore through this for years to come.”
–-Jerome Rothenberg

“The books are overwhelming! What a great time line and fabulous encyclopedia. I really am learning so much. A great read and great information. I donâ€™t know how you did it. Your enthusiasm and first-hand knowledge show on every page.”—Marjorie Perloff

“Visions and Affiliations is a landmark in literary studies. It is Jack Foleyâ€™s own life as a poet that makes this project stand out. In the two volumes of Visions and Affiliations, he digs deep, illuminating little known facts about such poets as Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Charles Bukowski, while, at the same time, giving us ‘hidden histories’ from across California. An innovative voice in American poetry, Foley now emerges as an innovator as to how we respond to our literary heritage. This book is essential reading for poets, readers of poetry and anyone interested in our cultural legacy.”—Neeli Cherkovski

“This brilliant, idiosyncratic, omnivorous study is simply the best book ever written on West Coast poetry.”
—Dana Gioia, The Chronicle of Higher Education

VISIONS & AFFILIATIONS: A California Time Line — Poets & Poetry 1940-2005 is a chronoencyclopedia of a scene that stretches over sixty-five years. People, ideas, and stories appear, disappear, and reappear as the second half of the century moves forward. Poetry is a major element in this kaleidoscopic California scene. It is argued about, dismissed, renewed, denounced in theory, asserted as divine, criticized as pornographic. Poetry is as Western as the Sierra foothills, and the questions raised here go to its very heart. Beginning with the publication of Kenneth Rexroth’s first book, this all-encompassing history-as-collage plunges us forward into the 21st century. â€śCalifornia authors keep generating massive anthologies in an attempt to tame the chaos of California, to pretend it isn’t there. Yet there it isâ€“staring them in the face like a great bear, alive, hungry and more than a little dangerous.”

________________________________

Berkeley Book Launch:
Thursday July 14 (Bastille Day)

There will be a book launch reading for Jack Foleyâ€™s Visions & Affiliationsat Moeâ€™s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, at 7: 30 on Bastille Day (Thursday, July 14). Adelle and Jack Foley will host. Guests will include poet/publisher Ivan ArgĂĽelles, Mary-Marcia Casoly, Lucille Lang Day, Katherine Hastings, Andrew Joron, Michael McClure and Al Young. There will also be a musical saw played by Diana McCulloch.

Photo: Adelle Foley

jake berryâ€™s cat
contemplates the real
history of calif
ornia poetry oh
jake berryâ€™s cat
looks it over oh
gives it a gander
is it his saucer of milk
or not?
jake berryâ€™s cat
knows a lot
living as he does
familiarly w/ jake
gives it a look
gives it a gander
whoaâ€”is that thereâ€”
in Florence, Alabama
on a day that resembles
this day in calif
ornia
jake berryâ€™s cat
contemplates the real
(foley)
history of calif poetry
mrkgnao! *

The contest is named after British author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with the oft-quoted opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

“It was a dark and stormy night;the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”—Â Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford(1830)

The contest solicits entries in a variety of categories. John Doble of New York won in the historical fiction category:

“Napoleon’s ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub.”

To take the prize for best purple prose, Mike Pedersen of North Berwick, Maine, relied on a thesaurus’-worth of synonyms:

“As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue.”

Profile of Philip Levine, poet laureate

By Jessica Goldstein
The Washington Post
Tuesday, AugustÂ 9, 7:43Â PM

Philip Levine was not expecting to be the new poet laureate of the United States. â€śIt just wasnâ€™t something I thought Iâ€™d get,â€ť he said, sounding a little amused by the whole thing.

Levine, who has written 20 collections of poems, has already won just about every major writing award: a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for â€śThe Simple Truth,â€ť a National Book Award in 1980 for â€śAshes: Poems New and Oldâ€ť and in 1991 for â€śWhat Work Is,â€ť the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Frank Oâ€™Hara Prize, two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships … the list goes on.

WHAT WORK IS

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is–if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
— Philip Levine

I love Philip Levine and his great, inspiring work. A fellow Detroiter, he is ten years my senior, and often on my mind. Our paths as poets keep crossing. We both wound up in the Golden State. When I first came upon They Feed They Lion, which continues to be one of my all-time favorite Philip Levine collections, I imagined that he must have overheard a bunch of school kids responding to an animal-feeding session at some zoo. “Ooo,” I pictured one little girl or boy yelling, “they feed they lion!” I told this to Philip in Seattle, where we were holding forth on a Bumbershoot Festival panel with poet-novelist Marge Piercy, all three of us Detroiters. “Close,” Philip allowed. “But it didnâ€™t happen quite that way.” He then told the story of how a co-workerâ€™s remark in an auto grease shop had spilled over into a dream that flushed out the poem. How can anyone not love the people-friendly, humanity-championing poetry of Philip Levine?â€” Al Young, Californiaâ€™s ex-poet laureate

They Feed They Lion: A taste of back-story

“In 1953 I was working in a Detroit grease shop with a tall, slender black man with a wonderful wit and disposition. His name was Lemon Still Jr., and he was a delight to work with. One day we were dividing used crosses that are the heart of a universal joint, which is a component of a transmission and not an enormous reefer. One pile was junk, the other pile was made up of those which could be refinished and sold as new. Before we stuffed the hopeless ones into a burlap sack, Lemon held the bag before me and pointed at the white lettering which read, ‘Detroit Municipal Zoo,’ and he uttered a single memorable sentence, ‘They feed they lion they meal in they sacks.’ I was stunned by the sentence itself as well as Lemon’s ability to simplify English grammar by reducing all third-person pronouns to the one ‘they.’ I don’t know how many years passed before I forgot that moment, but in the late 1960s it came back to me via an unforgettable dream.”–Philip Levine